No Shame
by sheofthebookandsong
Summary: Oneshot. The Final Battle was finished and Voldemort defeated only a few hours ago. Harry craves sleep, but Ron and Hermione need to come to terms with their battle scars and 'the scope and tragedy of the thing' before they can think of anything else. The only thing that eases the pain is having each other to turn to.
First story published on the site, so be gentle please :) This Romione story is set immediately after the Final Battle; plenty of fluff, but also beware of angst!

Obviously all of these characters belong to our goddess JKR and I have no ownership over any of them - if I did maybe they wouldn't be hurting so much :( Anyway, enjoy the love and the pain! As Ron says "all's fair in love and war, and this is a bit of both."

She finally woke up snuggled against his warm chest, cradled in his freckled arms - a fantasy she had been harbouring for years, what felt like forever. What she hadn't counted on, though was being woken up by his heaving sobs, his chest shaking and his mouth closed tight as he struggled to stifle the sound of his pain, struggled not to disturb her or to cause his best friend, sleeping on the bed beside them, any more grief or guilt than he had already suffered.

As Hermione looked at Ron through her eyelashes and felt his tears fall on her face, thicker and faster than they had done at Dumbledore's funeral, she felt her heart break for him all over again. The shock and pain of Fred's death had numbed a little for her in the hours afterwards as terror and grief for Harry, then a sense of unbelievable relief and safety such as she had not felt since the age of fifteen, had followed in the wake of the event.

The war was finally over, the Dark Lord gone, the woman who had tortured her and continued to do so in her nightmares was conquered. Harry was safe, she would be able to reunite with her parents whom she had missed so much - and most importantly, Ron was safe, Ron was warm, his reassuring heartbeat under her ear as she finally allowed herself to sleep after what felt like months. She hated herself slightly for prioritising her Ron over so, so many, but she couldn't help it - it had been like this for as long as she could remember.

She felt another wave of guilt as she looked at his boyish face, the pain in his blue eyes making him look so much older than she was used to. Since Voldemort's death a few hours ago, she herself had been able to feel nothing but numb thankfulness and an aching need to sleep, she had tried to force everything else away for the time being. But Ron - Ron couldn't escape it. He would have been half expecting, when he woke with her clutched tightly in his arms, to have looked up and seen Fred and George grinning and winking at him from the doorway, wondering loudly what had happened to the girl they thought had had far more sense than to climb into bed with a clumsy git like him. But it would never be like that now. Fred was gone now, far away from anywhere Ron could reach. And George had isolated himself the moment the war had finished, barely touching anyone, even Harry, while everyone else shouted and cheered and shot golden stars from their wands. The laugh marks which had seemed a constant feature of his face had gone, and he had moved as slowly as if he was too tired to do anything again. Too tired to laugh. Ron couldn't sleep any more, because his brother was gone. His childhood was gone.

Hermione didn't know what to do, but her hands seemed to move of their own accord to his face. She stroked him, moving her fingers over his cheeks wet with tears, over his soft mouth, over his long nose. "Sssh", she heard herself saying, placing gentle kisses all over his face, trying to stifle her own joy every time she kissed his soft mouth. "I'm still here, Ron", she whispered to him as he gripped her tighter, as if afraid she was going to slip away at any moment. "I'm here and Harry's here and neither of us are going anywhere, you hear me?" But still Ron couldn't stop himself crying; as he heaved in deep breaths, trying to calm himself, he whispered back to her. "I'm sorry, 'Mione, I'm so sorry...I can't stop…"

"You're…" She heaved him up by his ripped, stained and burned shirt front and stared at him. "What the _hell_ are you apologising to me for, Ron Weasley?" He tried to avert his eyes from her fierce glare, but she immediately reached for his chin and turned his face back to hers.

"Well...Harry's alive and he got You-Know-Who once and for all", Ron started between sobs. "And Mum gave..Mum gave that evil bitch who hurt you what she had coming to her...And you're alive, you're alive, you're alive", he babbled, still shaking with sobs as he pressed his face into her wild hair, breathing in the scent of her. "But I can't...I can't"... He gulped, struggling to form words. "I can't do this, 'Mione, I just can't stop crying like a prat and…"

She didn't let him finish his sentence. Standing up, she pulled him roughly off his four-poster bed, pulled him out the door and down the spiral staircase, out past the Fat Lady and down the corridors lying half in ruins outside. She was walking blindly, furiously, pulling Ron along behind her as he obeyed the pressure of her hand around his and continued trying unsuccessfully to steady his breathing.

She was at the doorway before she even realised where she had been taking him: the library. It seemed bizarre, surreal, to walk into the now battleworn room which had been her favourite haunt for so many years, the place she had always come to for peace and the comforting smell of pages around her. It seemed so long ago now that studying had been her highest priority, a lifetime ago - and yet even now, she still automatically gravitated towards this place as her sanctuary.

She forced Ron down onto one of the tables where she had sat so many times poring over her textbooks late into the night. Standing in front of him, she held his tearstained face in her shaking hands. "Now you listen to me, Ronald Weasley", she said to him firmly. "Don't you ever - _ever_ \- apologise to me for crying. You've lost...you've lost…" Hermione's voice was starting to shake as a lump formed in her throat and hot tears burned in her own eyes. "You've l-lost your b-b-brother, for Merlin's sake, Ron!"

 _Brilliant work, Hermione_ , she thought to herself scathingly - they were both shaking with sobs now, taking in deep shuddering breaths and holding onto each others' hands as if they were the only things left in the world. You're _supposed to be comforting_ him!

"Fred was...was so much to Harry and me and...and we only knew him for seven years! A-a-and you know that n-n-neither of us ever had any s-s-siblings of our own until we stayed at the B-B-Burrow with your f-f-family! I can't even b-begin to imagine what _you're_ going through now! Eighteen years of memories - a whole ch-childhood!

Ron crumpled into her, and she wrapped her arms tightly around him, rocking him as if he was a small child despite the fact that he was long and lanky and towered over her. She continued rocking him, stroking his back and kissing his hair and his forehead until he seemed to become too exhausted for more tears.

"So don't apologise about your tears, Ron", she whispered into his ear as he gradually became silent. "Don't apologise, because you have absolutely every reason in the world to cry right now. And you shouldn't ever feel guilty about it, or, or childish, or weak, or ashamed of it in any way. Because all it shows me is how incredibly much you're capable of loving and caring." Head still buried in her jumper, he gripped her hands still more tightly, and she returned the pressure.

"Not that I really needed any more evidence of how much you care about people", she said conversationally. "I mean, sometimes you were a git of a teenage boy who liked to pretend he didn't, but you've always been like that and you've never been particularly good at hiding it. You've never been particularly good at hiding anything. I think that was one of the biggest reasons I fell in love with you, really."

Ron looked up at her slowly, eyes wide. She could see his ears steadily turning red, and almost grinned at the familiar sight.

"Are - are you serious?", he asked her nervously, as if he was trying to give her an opportunity to retract what she had just said. "You - Hermione Granger - you're in...in _love_ with ...with _me_? I mean...I think I got that you fancied me, at least a little, but…"

She rolled her eyes at him and sighed. "You really are a bit thick, aren't you, Ron?" She ducked as he swatted at her playfully; the fact that she had managed to make that familiar Ron-grin, sheepish as ever, start to shine through on his freckled face, made her feel lighter and more happy than anything else could have done.

"Yes, you idiot, I've been in love with you since around about the age of thirteen - you haven't noticed?" He merely continued to stare at her as if he could barely let himself believe what she was saying. "I mean, I have to say I'm impressed at how oblivious you can be. Harry knows. I'm fairly certain everyone in your family knows." She thought for a second. "Actually, I'm fairly certain most of the people at Hogwarts know, now I come to think of it."

Ron continued to goggle at her. "But I'm...I'm...I'm just Ron"...

"You are very, very far from being "just" anything, Ron", she said to him sternly. "I mean, think what you've done, just in the past few weeks! You saved Harry's life, you killed a Horcrux with the sword of _Godric Gryffindor,_ you took me away from Malfoy Manor and...and….and saved me from _her_ …" Hermione shuddered momentarily; she knew it would be a long while before those scars would fade and thinking about it didn't help. She felt Ron shudder perhaps even more violently and he cupped her face in his hands, reassuring himself and allowing her to pull herself away from those memories and focus on his warm and solid presence again.

"Plus you helped destroy that absolute _monster_ Greyback and - oh yes, were you aware that you yelled abuse at Voldemort himself last night?"

A full-blown grin was slowly spreading across Ron's face; she felt an urge to laugh and kiss it.

"Nah, that doesn't sound like me", he said. "I think you must be confusing me with someone else."

She laughed. "I suppose it's possible", she teased. "There certainly were a lot of redheads here last night."

He grimaced and looked down, and she felt an immediate pang of regret and pain for reminding them both of their loss again. She took his face in her hands and kissed his trembling mouth, hoping he would know that it was a kiss of apology, of understanding and of comfort. He responded to it, not as urgently as he had done so many hours ago in the Room of Requirement, but gently, tenderly and slowly, as if he wanted it to last forever.

"I'm here", she whispered against his mouth. "And I'll stay here as long as you need me."

He melted into her, kissing her as though afraid to ever let go of her.

"Trust you to take us to the bloody _library_ for alone time, 'Mione", he grinned at her when they finally broke apart. "Though at least Harry isn't here to nag us this time. Impatient git."

She grinned back at him, and gestured around the room with its broken, fallen shelves and stray pages littering the floor. It gave her a slight pang to see the room so utterly destroyed, and normally the torn books would have horrified her more, but right now she was too glad to see Ron grinning again.

"Well, I thought we'd be pretty safe down here", she explained. "After all, we both know that nobody ever studies in this place except for me."

He kissed her again, and again. When they broke apart, he kept holding her hand, stroking his blistered and burnt thumb over her palm.

"D'you think it will ever stop hurting, Hermione?", he asked her quietly.

She looked steadily back at him.

"I don't know, Ron", she said honestly. "I've never read any book that's told me how long it takes to heal from something like this. I mean, we've seen how long Harry grieved for Sirius, for Dumbledore, but I suppose none of that was the same…" Her voice trailed off.

"All I know is this", she told him. "No matter how long it takes to stop hurting, whether a few months, a few years, a few decades...you'll never have to face it alone. The rest of your family will stay with you. Harry will stay with you. And so will I."

The pair of them fell asleep there in the Hogwarts library. Hermione had occasionally fallen asleep there while studying late into the night, head resting on an open book, but she had never felt particularly comfortable or well-rested there. But then again, she thought to herself as she dozed off, she had never slept with this particular red-headed, freckle-faced hero here next to her before.


End file.
